


Finding the Rhythm

by casey270



Series: The Caged Bird's Song [4]
Category: Hannibal (TV), Tommy Ratliff (Musician)
Genre: Brainwashing, Gen, Stockholm Syndrome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-01
Updated: 2019-03-01
Packaged: 2019-11-07 09:26:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17957891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/casey270/pseuds/casey270
Summary: For the February amnesty round in Hurt/Comfort Bingo. my prompts were: Drugged, Comfort food or item, Touch-starved, and for my wild, I chose Stockholm syndrome.Tommy finds a way to be good for Lecter.





	Finding the Rhythm

As the first day ages into the first night, the music grows. It’s louder and clearer in his mind, and normally an earworm like that would drive Tommy fucking crazy, but he doesn’t have anything competing with it now. He doesn’t have to fight it. He can let the music and the Doctor be his totality. He dozes and wakes and drifts, but those two certainties are all he needs to focus on.

He doesn’t know how long he free falls between worlds. It could be days or months or years, but it feels like a lifetime. His needs are being taken care of, the physical ones, anyway. He’s led to the bathroom periodically. He’s fed and dressed and bathed. He’s even shaved by Lecter. When he’s done with whatever task, he’s always led back to the bed. And dammit, he never even pretends to resist. He’s a doll, a child learning to grow to the expectations of its creator, and he doesn’t fucking care. 

The Doctor doesn’t wear the plastic suit he wore when Tommy was in the cage in the cellar, wherever the hell that was. He doesn’t hide his face, either. There’s no point to doing that now. The only thing Lecter keeps from before are the latex gloves. 

Tommy knows it’s not because Lecter is guarding against leaving any evidence of himself behind. That might have been the case before, but Tommy doesn’t think the world outside of this one room will ever see any trace of Tommy Joe Ratliff again, let alone any stray hairs or fibers that could connect Lecter to him.

He’s sure the Doctor wears them because he thinks of Tommy as unclean and bad, but Tommy just wants to show that he can be good. He can be whatever Lecter wants him to be because he needs that contact, just to prove to himself that he’s real. He needs to feel the warmth and life of another human.

Mostly all he cares about is earning the right to feel the Doctor’s naked touch - the day the barrier of the gloves is no longer needed. He knows that day will come if he works hard enough to be what Lecter wants. He’s not one damn bit closer to knowing what that is, but he knows the Doctor will guide him to it if he’s patient. 

He is patient enough to let the days flow in their own time. There’s a simplistic beauty in that timing, something he doesn’t think about so much as feel. It carries him along, always accompanied by the Doctor’s words and the music in his head. The days become the chorus of the music in his mind, and Lecter’s words become the verses. He lives in their tempo, and it’s so damn esoteric that he can’t quite grasp it. But he breathes in accordance with their timing, and he thinks he has all he needs to make it through whatever days he has. 

Then he wakes to find a guitar next to him. Tommy knows that Lecter must have left it here while he was sleeping. He recognizes it as a thing more precious than he thought possible. His guitars were what he always turned to when he needed to work things out in his head or when he just needed to play his goddamn emotions in the notes. They’ve always been his comfort, his safe place, when the pressure of life got too damn big.

There’s something more to it this time, though. Something so big and so important that it’s trying to break through the cotton fog in his brain. It pounding, demanding he see it for what it is, but the more he tries to concentrate, the further it slips behind the veil of confused drifting that separates him from his thoughts.

Without thinking, he does what he’s always done when his brain wouldn’t settle or focus. He picks up the guitar. He spends a moment or two running his hand over the high-gloss finish that protects the wood. It feels like foreplay as he teases his finger along the curve of the wood leading to the neck. But when he has it in position, and his fingers touch the strings, he’s the one who moans. 

He doesn’t know if he has plans on playing anything in particular. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. He hadn’t fucking thought, period. He just needed to hold it and feel it and make sure it wasn’t some damn dream. 

There’s a pick tucked neatly behind the strings, and his hands automatically do what he’s spent years training them to do. The fingers of one hand wander across the fretboard where they want, while the other uses the pick to pull the notes from the instrument. 

He lets himself drift with those notes, weaving in and out of the melody, hearing the harmony of the chords. He sits on the edge of the bed, playing without thinking, putting all his wants and needs and joys and sorrows into what he’s playing.

When he settles back to reality, he’s not surprised to realize that the music coming out of the guitar and filling the room matches the music that’s been going round and round and through his mind for so long. It almost matches. He still has a few things to work out to sync it up, and he loses himself in meandering through the details. 

He’s living in the music of his life, hearing it, feeling it, playing it. He’s so absorbed in the allness of it that he doesn’t notice that he’s not alone anymore. The sound of his playing apparently caught Lecter’s attention, and the Doctor came to investigate. 

Tommy remains oblivious to anything that’s not the music he’s making until he feels a hand stroking his cheek. The touch is warm and soft and most importantly, not latex. It’s the first human contact he’s had since he came to Lecter’s office. The entire time he’s been here, he’s been working to be good enough to deserve this. It’s become his whole justification for being, and everything that went before it feels so far in the past that it’s part of some other time, some other life. 

This is his greatest accomplishment, the pinnacle of his existence, and the feelings it bring with it color the music coming from the guitar. He recognizes it as the bridge of the song that was missing, and he leans his head into Lecter’s hand as he plays. The words he hears coming from Lecter give his life the completeness that’s the only thing he needs right now.

“Splendid progress, boy.”


End file.
